Now Playing: The New Order

Wolfenstein: The New Order is the most disappointing title I’ve played this year. It’s a first person shooter set in an alternate history 1960s, where the Nazis rule the world. This is a game that has you stealing a Nazi submarine, fighting giant Nazi robots and travelling to a NAZI MOON BASE.

It allows you to dual wield every available weapon, even sniper rifles – which double as rapid fire laser guns. This should be the best shooter ever – or at least, a pretty f**king entertaining one. But instead, I found The New Order to be one of the most tedious and unexciting shooters I’ve ever played.

The story of TNO is a disjointed mess that can’t quite decide if it wants to be super serious or super silly and doesn’t succeed at being either. The setting is certainly interesting, and the small details that build a picture of this alternate history are great.

But the game swings wildly between a more sombre, serious tale, and being completely and utterly ridiculous. Your character mumbles depressing little monologues about the horrors of war whilst simultaneously exploding Nazi spacemen into red mist with a laser rifle on the moon. The tonal clash is so bad it’s almost funny.

I probably wouldn’t have found the story so terrible if it wasn’t for the frequent cut-scenes interrupting what little action the game has to offer. The main campaign lasts barely 8 hours even on the hardest difficulty, which thanks to some rather poor AI is an utter cakewalk. It wouldn’t be so bad if that was 8 hours of ball busting action, but it’s more like 3 or 4. And it’s not very ball busting at all.

There’s surprisingly little action to be had in TNO. The actual combat heavy sections, where you finally get to let loose with your arsenal of dual wield rocket launching assault rifles (!) is where the game actually shines. But these sections are frustratingly short and continually interrupted with tedious ‘stealth’ sequences, dull cut-scenes and, believe it or not – fetch quests.

When I first arrived at the ‘home base’ I was interested to see how it would evolve over the course of the game, but I quickly began to dread every return between the core missions. Because rather than simply letting the player explore and chat with people at their own leisure, someone decided it would be really great to force the player to tediously search for random objects, tools and parts for various NPCs. Yes, it’s about as exciting as it sounds.

But I could ignore the shoddy story and the dull fetch quests if the game just had far more bite to it. The core gameplay mechanics are solid. It’s a mixture of run and gun (and slide and gun) with an automatic cover system. Combined with the ability to dual wield every weapon, and the mechanics are in place for a fast paced, explosive and highly entertaining campaign.

But the game never really takes advantage of its own mechanics. It’s far too concerned about interrupting you for another cut-scene, or forcing another stealth section. Every time it feels like the game is about to let you loose it abruptly (and frustratingly) pulls you back. It’s like it just doesn’t want you to have fun.

A 1960s Nazi Moon Base should be the greatest FPS level ever. I was expecting it to be the real highlight of the game. But instead, it’s just another series of generic corridors. You get out onto the surface of the moon for about 2 minutes in order to travel from one airlock to the next. But aside from a couple of hostile robots, there’s no action on the surface at all.

Why didn’t we have a full-on action sequence on the surface? Blasting Nazi spacemen with laser rifles, bouncing from cater to crater in the low gravity, watching enemy corpses floating into space? Exciting, silly, fun. But we don’t get anything like that at all. We just get more dull corridors followed by another terrible boss fight in a hanger bay. 

Oh yes, the ‘boss fights’. The boss fights in this game are honestly the worst. The giant Nazi robot may be the worst of the bunch, as you simply sit in a hole and duck, before popping out and shooting its big red eye a few times until you can run underneath it and shoot its big red ass.

The level design is equally uninspired with a familiar pattern of – corridor – arena – corridor – arena regardless of location. And although the novelty of dual wielding everything is initially great, the game doesn’t have a particularly great selection of weapons. It also removes weapons between levels, forcing you to start from scratch every time, usually by forcing a stealth sequence.

Outside of the fun dual wielding and the interesting setting, it’s hard to really think of anything I enjoyed in The New Order. It’s short, easy, with little to no replay value. The story is a disjointed mess. The level design is basic. The boss fights are terrible. And whilst the shooting mechanics are solid, the game never really lets the player fully enjoy them.

I kind of hate this game. It’s not that bad, because overall, it is a competent, if uninspired FPS. It looks pretty good and I really did like the setting a lot. But the game just falls so f**king flat that I can’t help but be massively disappointed. I mean … Nazi Moon Base! How the hell do you f**k that up so badly?

5/10